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I'm about half way between GR and Kalamazoo. Looking down the thread, it looks like maybe there's four interested already, if not more since I opened a comment window. As interesting as it may seem to go to Ann Arbor, I don't really think it's worth it, but somewhere in West Michigan might be worth it.

Conor O'Neills is likely to be on the noisy and crowded side, especially around that time on a Saturday night. (Unless their "Celtic Room" next door is available? I don't know if they'll let large groups take it over if they're not doing a big banquet or something.)

Leopold's, a couple blocks south of there, might be a little less busy, though I haven't been there on a weekend night recently....

I had no idea you guys were also in Ann Arbor. You had to pick the day of the Starcraft Revival Tournament that I've been looking forward to though.

Downtown Ann Arbor on a Saturday when the students are back could be rough unless you reserve a room somewhere. That is also the weekend after midterms. ABC reserves rooms, but I think they charge you.

Keep in mind that UofM is playing Illinois (who could make a run at the Big 10 title this year) at 8:00. The game is in Champaign, so I would think that the bars in AA will be pretty busy. MSU plays Ohio State at 3:30, which may cause some others to run a bit late. Eh, who am I kidding? The fact that I'm even posting about sports means that I'm not nerdy enough to come to a/. party anyway, so I doubt this will affect anyone beyond making it difficult to get into a bar.

Finding seating for a large group in a downtown AA restaurant on a Saturday night while school is in session is nigh-impossible without an advance reservation (And I'm not sure many bars will reserve tables). A couple good places to take a group in the area include Pizza House [pizzahouse.com] and Creekside Grill [restaurant.com].

Another (rather unique) place you could try would be Casa Dominick's over on Monroe - you could try reserving the patio area, the upstairs, or the downstairs portion. There's more to that place than you'd think. I lived there for four years...

Pizza House isn't really a bar (though they do have beer), and Creekside Grill isn't downtown, so I'm not sure those meet CmdrTaco's requirements. Though my personal vote would be for breaking the requirements even more and moving the date two days later (much easier to find space on a Monday night!) and holding it at Leopold Bros.

In any case, this looks to be well beyond the just-drop-by-some-bar scale, unless the goal is to see what a slashdotting looks like in real life. So somebody needs to call up

I am surprised to see that CmdrTaco isn't going to host a party in his own home town of Holland!? Anyway. I would definitely be interested in a/. party here in West Michigan (not necessarily in Holland).

I found out about this site my 2nd day of college (Go Green!) and signed up then. I realized I didn't like my ID, and I think I created another. I have since forgotten it due to disuse. The ID was higher.

Since I have relocated to MI, it's a shorter trip for me! I have already informed the wife that I will be in attendance.. Her response was "what a geek...." And I told her that I am damn proud of it, too!

Count me in. I'm not too active discussion wise, but Slashdot was responsible for some pretty big events in my life that culminated in a trip to Japan, all expenses paid by a company I was doing contract work for.
I'll be sure to share the story at the party if anyone is interested.

Well, with 59 attendees signed on, even if HALF of you show up, I suspect it'll be tough to get seated in any bar. Does anyone have any ideas of larger places that could handle us? What's the biggest place downtown that doesn't have TVs that might cause a stoopid football game to interfere?
We have a few days to sort this out. Please keep tabs on this discussion for info. I'll update the party location if we change.

We could alternatively make it an afternoon thing- then no matter where we go, it will be less crowded with standard bar traffic, but with 59 people here, we'd need some sort of feedback loop to determine that. I can be emailed at malda at slashdot dot org if anyone wants a direct bit of feedback on a time change.
We could do most anything- switching to an afternoon or location. Unless someone knows a good place that serves beer and can handle 50 people;)

There are all sorts of things downtown [google.com] that can accommodate a private party but we'd have to pop each participant for money up-front (and we'd require a PHB to organize the herd of cats that we are). Hockeytown could probably seat all of us without reservation but there is a Wings game on the 20th as well.

Basically, it will be a near perfect storm for attendance at these places.

Good Time Charley's [good-time-charleys.com] is a possibility, they definitely serve alcohol and I know they've reserved for parties of our size. There are TV's but if we reserved it wouldn't be a problem. But it'd cost us.

Are there any plans for a webcam or some other sort of live feed? If people are willing to chip like $0.50 or $1 in each, I can set my laptop, webcam, and cell phone up to provide some sort of ugly live feed. I have put together a good little perl project that pulls images from a low bandwidth source and caches them in a tmpfs mount, then uses Perl::ImageMagick to scale/crop/etc the image so you can zoom in and stuff.

Because of the complications of the day of week, I too would suggest Dominicks. Not because they aren't usually crouded, they are usually packed. The redeeming virtue of them is the ability to reserve parts well in advance, and I'd suggest we just reserve the whole top floor.

Failing there, I'd attempt to reserve a chunk of Leopolds. Either way, I'd stay off of Main, State, or South U.

I too would suggest Dominicks. Not because they aren't usually crouded, they are usually packed. The redeeming virtue of them is the ability to reserve parts well in advance, and I'd suggest we just reserve the whole top floor.

Actually lots of these places have areas you can reserve--e.g. Conor O'Neills has a room on the side for parties.

They might require some sort of commitment, though; haven't had to do it myself.

Failing there, I'd attempt to reserve a chunk of Leopolds. Either way, I'd stay off of M

This thread has only been active for two days and at this point there are already 76 people looking to attend this event. I can't think of anywhere in Ann Arbor that could accommodate 76 people just showing up unannounced. Looking at other online forums, and the comments below, it would seem many people are willing to drive several hours to attend the Slashdot Birthday Party in Ann Arbor rather than starting one a bit closer to home. That being said, I could easily see hundreds of people signing up for

It's just like a block or two south, but we've got space now for apparently 100 or so people and they know we're coming. I'll of course notify the general populace whenever we can next make it. We've already got like 90 folks signed on so it looks like it'll be a helluva night.

That does bring up an interesting point though. We've told Leopold Bros. to expect around 100. 97 folks (as I write this) have registered, but how many of those are planning on bringing a guest who may not be a registered Slashdot member?
This number could jump to 150 or more without even having anyone else register.

I've been a Slashdot reader for years. After moving the family to A2 I was pleasantly surprised to find it generated near our backyard. Watch for Twittering from the A2B3 paparazzi.;-) Should be a heck of good time.

Ive been a slashdot member for a long time. I met a lot of early/.ers when we formed the MDLUG in 1996 or 1997 and I first met the creators at their booth at the first Linux World out in San Jose. I look forward to seeing some of both at the party.

Well, I had a blast, and hello to everyone I met! It's nice knowing how many decent, friendly, smart people are in the area who happily self-identify as geeks.

I already knew 5 or 6 of the partygoers because we're regulars at the Ann Arbor 2600 meeting [2600.com]. If you enjoyed the company last night, I encourage you to drop in some time. They take place on the first Friday of each month, at the Starbuck's on South University (above Pinball Pete's), and usually get going around 6pm.

There's no organization, no leader, no membership, no RSVP, no agenda, and no nametags. Just swing by, sip something caffeinated, and enjoy the company of like-minded (or intelligently disagreeable) folks.